


keep me in a daydream, keep me goin' strong

by livingtheobsessedlife



Category: Leverage
Genre: F/M, Gen, annie kroy returns, badass au, i'm shit at summaries i'm sorry just read it please, pre-Nigerian Job
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-08
Updated: 2018-07-08
Packaged: 2019-06-07 07:42:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15214397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livingtheobsessedlife/pseuds/livingtheobsessedlife
Summary: Before they were a team or partners or whatever you want to call Them, Nate and Sophie were just a couple of people trying to find things, racing across the globe in a perpetual, unwinning game of cat and mouse, conducting heists and retrievals of million-dollar objects and miscellaneous unsuspecting marks one after the other.This time, Sophie finds the mark first.





	keep me in a daydream, keep me goin' strong

**Author's Note:**

> Original Prompt: all I’m trying to do is capture this fucking guy but you just busted in here like such an ass to try and kill the mofo and I swear to god I will shove my foot so hard up your ass if you kill him— I altered it a tad in writing where they aren’t trying to kill him so much as gain custody/be the one to spook him/get credit for snatching him but you get the point
> 
> I started this over a year ago and never finished it and I was in a n/s mood today so I finally finished it up. Please enjoy. I might continue it one day. Not sure. (Also, it isn't really betad at all so please excuse errors just let me live my life)
> 
> Title from Stevie Wonder's Superstition, which I listened to while writing today

“Well, well, well, Mr. LaRue,” Annie Kroy sneered, her Irish accent thick and demeaning, “You really seem to have gotten yourself in quite a nip of trouble, haven't you?” She smirked viciously, revealing her teeth with the grandeur of a Disney villain. Her heels clicked against the cool emptiness of the warehouse, and she kept one hand in her pocket as she walked, the other dangling at her side with a gun clutched easily between her fingers. 

“M-Miss Kroy, please don't hurt me,” The mark cowered and pleaded and she almost wanted to laugh aloud, “It's not me you want.”

She had been pacing the floor, back and forth, a hypnotizing pattern of ease, but she abruptly turned on her heel, looking to him with some sort of manufactured fury (for effect, of course). In less than a few steady strides she was before him, dominating his bound figure, “Mr. LaRue,” She growled, “I do believe I have the right man.”

“Oh, yes, you definitely do.” Another voice replied, startling her, familiar and unexpected. She turned toward the sound at the foot of the warehouse.

Nate Ford entered, a self-satisfied grin on his face, an obnoxious conundrum of infinite matters. His gait was calm, casual, patient. He knew where he was, knew who he was dealing with, knew why he was there.

“Nate Ford.” The brunette managed a shake of her head, a look in her eye that warned Nate of a certain radius he had to keep about her (he had asked for her help then very nearly betrayed her all in one fell swoop the last time they had been in each other’s presence, and she hadn't quite forgiven him yet).

“Sophie Devereaux.” He grinned back, ignoring her strange, Irish drawl.

“Devereaux?” The bound figure muttered, “But she’s… Kroy?”

They ignored him. 

“Give me this one, Ford.” Sophie continued, glaring at the insurance investigator, gritting her teeth. 

“You know I can't let that happen, Soph.” How the hell was he so casual about this???

“Soph?!” LaRue was thoroughly confused, but that was of no concern to the insurance investigator and the woman with the gun (he thought she was Annie Kroy, but this guy is calling her Sophie Devereaux?)

“Nate, just turn around and leave. I'll give you the painting, just give me LaRue.” She tried to negotiate, she really did, but the only response she received was a scoff.

“I'm not about to trust a grifter.”

LaRue takes the chance and, still bound to the chair, carefully starts scooting away. The grifter and the insurance investigator turn and glare at him, “DONT EVEN THINK ABOUT IT!” They both holler in terrifying unison and he cowers. 

Okay, Sophie would be lying if she said Nate wasn’t getting to her just a little bit. She was just asking for one tiny little thing. So what, she's a thief? Why shouldn’t he trust her? Why did he always think she was lying? Well, okay, her track record insinuated that she was lying, but she wasn't in this case! Not really, at least. Well, not as much as she could be. 

“I swear to God, Nate! Get off your high horse, please! I worked on this con for months!” Her voice was raised (still effortlessly strung with the tongue of a native Irishwoman) and her hand rose with it without her realizing, the gun still clutched between her fingers and now aimed at Nate. 

That made Nate take a step back, maybe sweat a little, “Soph, think about what you’re doing.”

LaRue inched away some more, his eyes set on the door. 

“What are you doing?” Nate turned to the bound form, pausing the argument with his shriek of incredulity. LaRue froze, a deer in headlights. Nate turned back to Furious Sophie. 

“You cannot just come in here and wreck all my hard work, Nate!”

“All your hard work?! Sophie you kidnapped him!”

“Technically his head of security kidnapped him, I was just here when he brought him here… and asked him to do so…”

“Sophie!”

The mark attempted escape again. Another fail. Sophie turned to him, “Stop trying to get away, you arse!” 

He cowered more. 

For somebody that both of them were out to get, he was not the bravest nor the smartest mark in the world. 

In the time that followed, it felt like hours that Nate and Sophie glared at one another, neither backing down, both in desperate want of the man currently in Sophie’s unreliable custody.

“Look,” Nate eventually said, “If you give me LaRue and his painting, I’ll owe you one in the future.”

“You’ll… owe me one?” Sophie echoed, the concept new on her tongue, a curious notion.

“Yeah,” Nate nodded encouragingly, “I’ll owe you one, a favor, whatever you need.”

Sophie thought for a second, realizing how tired she was. Long cons took a lot of work, a lot of seducing, and this far in she was beginning to doubt her motives, if they were worthy enough for the exhaustion.

“Fine.” Sophie let out in a sigh, “You can have him.”

As one, they turned toward their insidious hostage, “Get up,” Sophie growled. LaRue jumped in fear as they towered over him.

In a single move, Nate managed to wrap handcuffs around LaRue’s wrists, yanking him from the chair. 

“Nice doing business with you, Ms Kroy,” Nate gave a theatrical nod.

Sophie grinned, “You, too, Mr. Ford. Until next time.”

LaRue was still hopelessly confused. As he stumbled along the concrete, Nate’s hand wrapped tightly around his upper arm, he mumbled, “What the hell just happened? Who was that? Devereaux? Kroy? Some con woman? This is a disgrace,”

Nate grinned as they got to his car, a sinister black in the mid afternoon sunlight, “That, Mr. LaRue, was the woman who just caught you in your act. You’re under arrest for insurance fraud.”

“Who is she?”

Nate’s lips pulled apart to reveal a smile not unlike Sophie’s earlier display of villainy as he shoved LaRue into the back seat of his car, “She’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing, LaRue. And now I owe her one. You better tell your buddies to watch out.”

“My buddies, wait-“ Nate shut the door on LaRue, wet around to the front as the fraud in his backseat yelled, “What do you know, Ford?”

As far as anybody other than Sophie Devereaux knew, Nate Ford knew nothing. Nothing.

**Author's Note:**

> hi check out my tumblr for similar junk, i'm dammit-stark


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